Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
What we become depends on what we read after all the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is the collection of books.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.
—John Adams (1735–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates loot on Treasure Island and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.
—Walt Disney (1901–66) American Entrepreneur
I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart’s history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Writer, Journalist, Political Leader, Editor
It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books.
—William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) American Unitarian Theologian, Poet
Early in the morning, at break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one’s strength, to read a book—I call that vicious!
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one’s mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life…
—George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist
Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
Readers are not sheep, and not every pen tempts them.
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-born American Novelist
The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.
—Anthony Burgess (1917–93) English Novelist, Critic, Composer
The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution—such call I good books.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
Reading not only enlarges and challenges the mind; it also engages and exercises the brain. Today’s youth who sits mesmerized by a television screen is not going to be tomorrow’s leader. Television watching is passive. Reading is active.
—Richard Nixon (1913–94) American Head of State, Lawyer
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours. So far as we apprehend and see the connection of ideas, so far it is ours; without that it is so much loose matter floating in our brain.
—John Locke (1632–1704) English Philosopher, Physician
I cannot live without books.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it: we must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and soul.
—Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist
Human contacts have been so highly valued in the past only because reading was not a common accomplishment…. The world, you must remember, is only just becoming literate. As reading becomes more and more habitual and widespread, an ever-increasing number of people will discover that books will give them all the pleasures of social life and none of its intolerable tedium.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Satirist, Short Story Writer
Books are fatal: they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
Five daily newspapers arrive in my California driveway. The New York times and the Wall Street Journal are supplemented by three local papers. As for magazines, I read, or at least skim, Business Week, Forbes, The Economist, INC; Industry Week, Fortune. Other subscriptions include Sales and Marketing Management, Modern Health Care, Progressive Grocer, High Tech Business, and Slaon Management Review from MIT. I religiously read Business Tokyo, Asia Week, and Far Eastern Economic Review. I glance at Newsweek and Time … but I devour the New Republic, Policy Review, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Monthly, and Public Interest. How about books? A dozen or more each month.
—Tom Peters (b.1942) American Management Consultant, Author
Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends.
—Silas Weir Mitchell (1829–1914) American Neurologist, Writer
The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.
—Stephen Leacock (1869–1944) Canadian Humorist, Writer
A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Read not books alone, but men, and amongst them chiefly thyself.—If thou find anything questionable there, use the commentary of a severe friend, rather than the gloss of a sweet-lipped flatterer; there is more profit in a distasteful truth than in deceitful sweetness.
—Francis Quarles (1592–1644) English Religious Poet
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